行为地理学的学科特色与拓展路径

行为地理学是人文地理学的一门重要的分支学科,因其独特的分析视角和对人地关系的深入阐释而在20世纪70年代快速发展。但是,目前缺少关于行为地理学学科框架的系统界定,对于行为地理学在人文地理学中的独特性和学科分工的讨论尚不够深入,这既不利于人文地理学其他子学科的研究者正确认识行为地理学研究的价值,也不利于行为地理学者之间凝聚共识、构建学术共同体。恰逢中国行为地理学专业委员会成立之际,论文尝试进一步厘清行为地理学的学科特色与定位,在回应当前行为地理学面临的一些学科属性和理论路径选择方面的困惑的基础上,指出行为地理学的一些拓展路径。行为地理学兼具研究对象和研究方法论的定位,其核心价值在于提供了理解人地关系的个体视角、主观视角和过程视角;未来行为地理学应该在坚持自身特色的基础上,立足尺度理论推动微观尺度研究与宏观尺度研究的对话整合,进一步拓展对行为的心理机制解释和相关因果机制的检验,并立足中国的地理背景加强中国行为地理学研究的原创性和应用价值。期待更多学者积极投身行为地理学研究之中,共同推动中国行为地理学的发展。

On the unique features of behavioral geography and the potential avenues for its future research

Behavioral geography is an important subdiscipline of human geography. It provides innovative approach and special angles for interpreting human-environment relationship. Behavioral geography had experienced rapid development in the 1970s, which was considered an era of "behavioral movement". However, the development of behavioral geography slowed down in Western geography since the 1990s and few theoretical and methodological progresses had been made until recently. Moreover, there are some confusions about the unique features and theoretical contributions of behavioral geography within both the subdisciplines of human geography and the general "behavioral science". This situation is detrimental for researchers in other subdisciplines of geography to realize the values of behavioral geography and for the communication and consensus building among behavioral geographers. Recently, the professional committee on behavioral geography was founded in the Geographical Society of China. This provides new opportunities for the development of behavioral geography in China on the one hand, yet makes more pressing requirements for discussing the disciplinary and theoretical issues in behavioral geography on the other hand. Therefore, this article summarized four related unique features of behavioral geography and provided some referential directions for future studies. Specifically, this article argued that behavioral geography is both a subject of specific objects (environment-behavior relations) and a methodological science (behaviorism), and provides individual, subjective, and process-centered perspectives to interpret the relationship between human behaviors and geographical environment. Behavioral geographers should pay more attention to the questions related to spatial behavior and behavior-environment interaction instead of behaviorism. The models and explanations at the individual level should be extended to the group level in behavioral geography. Continuous efforts should be made to explore the mediating mechanisms of psychological processes when explaining the relationship between human behaviors and geographical environment, yet more attention should be paid to models based on subjective well-being and more robust tests of causal relation. Chinese behavioral geographers should enhance their own specialty and knowledge contribution by probing into group behaviors within collective culture and exploring more applications in behavioral geography. This article may clarify the values of behavioral geographical studies, further the theoretical debates in Chinese behavioral geography, and draw more scholarly attention to some promising directions in behavioral geography.